Integration of Engee with equipment
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Integration (in the context of this article) means connecting external equipment to Engee and supporting various communication protocols directly in Engee. This allows external interfaces to be used directly in Engee, including CAN adapters, UDP protocols and other devices.
| External hardware, interfaces and protocols are connected and running on the user’s computer, but are available directly in Engee. |
Engee runs in a browser and, as a result, does not have direct access to the physical ports on the computer. Restricting browser access to the low-level interfaces of the operating system prevents you from simply plugging in equipment and immediately starting work.
To solve this problem, the following interaction architecture is used:
This scheme shows that Engee communicates with a client program installed on the user’s computer. The client program, in its turn, works with the physical interfaces of the system (COM ports, USB, etc.) and sends commands/data to the connected equipment. A server on the Engee side is used to organise network communication between Engee and the client program.
| Before starting work, the client program must be started on the computer to which the equipment is connected. The browser with Engee can be opened either on the same user’s computer or on any other device on the network. This allows the creation of "virtual labs" and enables multiple users to connect to the same computer, working directly with the equipment via Engee. |
Connecting to equipment
To connect external hardware to Engee, install the support package by running the following command at command line 
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engee.package.install("Engee-Device-Manager")After successful installation, a message will be displayed on the command line:
This message will provide the URL to connect via the client programme. Links to download the archives with these client programmes will also be offered. Select the desired archive depending on your operating system (Windows/Linux):
Download the archive, unzip it and the client programme to your computer. After launching, a window will open with a field for entering the URL from the message:
Next, copy the URL from the message in the command line (text after Link to connect:), paste it into the client programme and click "Connect ". The connection status should change to "Connected ":
Working with VISA specification
After installation of the equipment support package and connection via the client programme, the system becomes available to work with VISA specification.
VISA (Virtual Instrument Software Architecture) is a specification developed to unify interaction with measuring instruments. VISA provides an abstraction for communicating with different types of equipment such as USB, Ethernet, GPIB and other interfaces. Through the client software, Engee accesses these instruments through the server, allowing them to be operated from Engee using Julia.
Working with VISA in Engee allows:
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Get a list of available appliances;
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Manage available instruments - open sessions, send commands, read responses;
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Work with binary data and I/O buffers.
For more information about working with VISA specification see the article Working with external equipment via VISA in Engee.
Working with RITM
After installation of the package of support for work with external equipment and connection of the client programme, the module for work with RITM becomes available in the system.
RITM is a hardware-based real-time modelling solution that provides the ability to integrate and control processes on real equipment. With the external hardware support package, Engee accesses the RITM system and can work directly with it using the Julia programming language.
Working with RITM in Engee allows:
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Load and run models on the RITM machine;
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Generate C pipelining for models;
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Compile and run models in different modes (independent or interactive);
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Check device availability and work with files on RITM;
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Get information about memory consumption of the model and output execution logs.
Software control
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Usage in program control functions of VISA and RITM requires installation of an equipment package: |
Read more about the functions in the articles VISA software control and Software control of RITM.